SCARED BY OXFORD'S SAMPLE QUESTIONS?

The sample Q&As  posted by Oxford will have reassured quite a few students. If they made you panic instead, though, you are not alone. While it helps to know what type of questions to expect, how are you to manage such sophisticated answers?  Is this not just testing whether an interviewee is regularly asked her opinion on weighty matters, can handle formal language and already scans issues from several complex angles? Surely, these are skills a university is meant to bestow?
 

The answer to the latter is yes, but Cambridge interviews are quite similar.  Oxbridge fishes for high ability because it teaches to a high standard from day one. Bright students from all backgrounds, it is assumed, will be able to juggle questions like the ones released in the suggested manner, and many do.

 

Still, even a very bright student not yet schooled in, say, how to  “construct categories” , make “nuanced distinctions”, or offer solutions to political problems frequently discussed at Eton may lose confidence now.  Some subject interviews do seem to require a very broad education.  If that makes you want to give up on Oxbridge, here are three reasons not to:  
 

1)   Students also get in by giving good but slightly simpler answers than the ones  posted, albeit not everywhere.

2)   Colleges that really want bright students from ordinary schools often ask less obscure or abstract questions.

3)   You still have around six weeks to become a convincing interviewee. 

 

It is the third point which is most important. If the Oxbridge interview is about establishing what you know and how you think, you must now deepen your knowledge base and sharpen your thinking skills. Luckily, both these things can be done by reading. Start with the interview chapters in OXBRIDGE ENTRANCE: THE REAL RULES*. Then check out the guide's sections on “how to read” and "the book". Next,  go to its advice on individual degree courses.

 

Now allocate half an hour a day or more to a suggested book or website. No time? Surely you can sleep thirty minutes less? This kind of preparation will not just introduce you to facts (or ideas), but will also allow you to identify connections, contrasts or dilemmas. A sense of complexity and greater ease with formal language will follow. Topped with a bit of talking practice and a willingness to express your own views, this should put you back in the running.

__________________________________________________________

 

* - Please note that the alleged downloads of this book offered online are invariably old,  outdated  editions. Avoid!